Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/58

liv nothing more than the accredited opinion that the blood was in motion within the vessels, particularly the veins of the body. In ancient times, indeed, the veins were regarded, as they are esteemed by the vulgar at the present hour, as the principal vessels of the body; they only were once believed to contain true blood; the arteries were held to contain at best but a little blood, different from that of the veins, and mixed accidentally in some sort with the vital spirits, of which they were the proper conduits.

In former times, farther,—times anterior to Harvey whether more remotely or more nearly, the liver, as the organ of the hæmapoësis, was regarded as the source of all the veins, i. e. of all the proper blood-vessels; the heart, as the generator of heat and the vital spirits, was viewed as the mere cistern of the blood, whence it was propelled by the act of inspiration, and whither it reverted during the act of expiration, its flow to this part of the body or to that, being mainly determined by certain excitations there inherent or specially set up. By and by, however, the liver was given up as the origin of the venous system generally; but such anatomists as Jacobus Sylvius, Realdus Columbus, Bartholomæus Eustachius, and Gabriel Fallopius, may be found opposing Vesalius in regard to the origin of the vena cava, and asserting that it takes its rise from the liver, not from the heart, as the great reformer in modern anatomy had maintained.

In the progress of anatomical investigation, the valves in the interior of the heart, at the roots of the two great cardiac arterial trunks, and in the course of the veins at large, were perceived and their probable uses and actions canvassed. The general and prevalent notion was that they served to break or moderate the force of the current in the interior of the vessels or parts where they were encountered; though Berengarius of Carpi, in describing the cardiac valves, had already said that the effect of the tricuspid valves, between the right auricle and ventricle, must be to prevent the blood in the former cavity